In Memoriam: An Interview With Lauren Bacall

For over six decades, Lauren Bacall rafted the kind of tough-talking come-hither characters women want to emulate and actresses only dream about playing. Here, we revisit a conversation with the icon that originally ran in the November 2007 issue of ELLE.

"Don't ask. Don't ahhsk," Lauren Bacall says, responding to a how-are-you-today? in her lusciously low-slung voice. Bacall, speaking from the Paris hotel where she just arrived after wrapping the forthcoming comedy Wide Blue Yonder, puts it plain: "Exhausted I am." But if you pan out from her present fatigue, the wonder of Bacall's self-described "zig-zagging" career—which has moved from screen success to stage and back again, with some admittedly "totally forgettable" movies along the way—is that it has her, at 83, conquering dramatic terrain no other actress can claim.

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Born Betty Joan Perske in the Bronx, Bacall seared herself into the American psyche in Howard Hawks' 1944 WWII drama To Have and Have Not by instructing Humphrey Bogart, with a sly sparkle in her preternaturally gorgeous cat eyes, to put his "lips together and blow" if he needed her. She was 20 at the time, he 45, and you can practically see his knees buckling during her whistling tutorial. Bacall and Bogart's uncanny sexual chemistry and the palpable sense of their real-life love story (the pair married in 1945) are also the thrill of the two other '40s classics that made her a legend, The Big Sleep and Key Largo.

Bacall back-burned her career in the '50s when her two children with Bogart were young—"but thank God I did put our marriage first, because it didn't last too long," she says now, referring to Bogart's death from cancer in 1957. It wasn't until after she married and divorced Jason Robards (with whom she had another child) in the '60s that she rebuilt her acting life in earnest, with the boost of two Tony awards (for Broadway's Applause in 1970, and Woman of the Year, 1981); the realization that Hollywood blockbusters weren't for her ("I cant play that game; I still wash my own nylons at night," she says) and, mostly, innate curiosity. "It stems from my mother and her family," Bacall says. "They were all self-taught or put themselves through university. I've always felt that work—learning from people who know more than I know—is what keeps you going."

In some movies, such as Robert Altman's 1994 Prêt-à-Porter, Bacall has played up her glamorous image. In others, such as her riveting turn as a villager who betrays Nicole Kidman's lady-on-the-lam in Lars von Trier's 2003 Dogville, she has cut against expectations marvelously. Yet it is her regal, salty-tongued D.C. grande dame in The Walker, 2007's jewel box-tight thriller by Paul Schrader (Affliction, Auto Focus), that recalls the coltish heroines she played opposite Bogie. When I point out that she has some sassy lines helping Woody Harrelson's character, a gay ladies' escort, find his way out of a political hornet's nest, she chuckles throatily, then purrs, "Yeeess, yessss, I knowww. I enjoyed saying them, too." Suddenly sounding distinctly brighter, Bacall says of her future projects: "I just hope something comes along that interests me." Somehow, I don't doubt that it will.

What was it like working for Warner Bros in the studio's heyday?

All the Warner actors were real actors. They started in theater and led very straightforward lives—you never saw entourages around. The MGM girls were the glamour girls, and they always had the makeup and hair people with them, and all that.

What was the moment you realized you'd made it as an actress?

I don't think I ever had that click [of recognition] because of meeting Bogie and falling blindly for the first love in my life. My focus was on him and that life and not so much on my own career. So actually, in a way, I missed that moment.

Is there an actress in Hollywood who inspires you?

Well, when I was a kid it was Bette Davis. She was my idol. I used to cut school and sit in the back of the theater; of course, I would have snuck in because I couldn't afford a ticket. I would smoke myself into oblivion and watch Bette Davis. I totally worshipped her—everything she did—and wanted to be just like her. Davis didn't always play the most popular women, but she played every kind of character you can think of. And oh, she was fabulous! Look at those movies now—Jezebel, The Little Foxes. My God! I don't see anybody like that anymore.

What's a highlight of your recent movie career?

I adored Breaking The Waves, so when Lars von Trier wanted me in Dogville, I was beside myself with joy. He works in a way that nobody I've ever worked with works. He holds his camera on his shoulder, and you might be in the picture and not know it, so you have to pay attention. It's all very weird, all of that. We had to forget everything we never learned about making movies. But it was a great experience, and I'm all for new experiences. I mean, what the hell? I'm not going to play Scarlett O'Hara now, so I better just [go for a] great new experience.